Christophe Gans: The restoration process was very long and very expensive on this film for a simple reason: it is that the film was originally one of the first digital calibrations done in France - if not the first, in fact. Today, it's very common, but at the time, it was a new technique, quite heavy to handle. We were a bit pressed for time. The film had been overrun, had had its ups and downs and we had missed a first release date. Another date had therefore been set. We couldn't afford to miss it again, so I'll tell you that I have a bad memory of the film's calibration. It was heavy, it was long and at the same time it was rushed. We were not completely satisfied. In fact, since that time, I had kept a bad memory of this experience.

n addition, the film has many shots. There are 3004 editing cuts, so it was complicated. In fact, I had never gone back to the film and that's also why, in large part, the film never had HD versions. That is to say that when the film was released on Blu Ray, it was simply a blow-up (quite mediocre by the way) of the SD version. This explains, today, the shock that people will have, in my opinion, compared to the version they saw on DVD, which is quite correct. It must be said that the film is very well photographed by Dan Laustsen, who is a very great cinematographer, and here we go directly to a film in Ultra HD and in Dolby Atmos. So let me be clear: the film has not been changed, it has not been modified, it has not been revised. It is the film as it was released at the time, in its entirety.

C.V: So, the long version.

C.G: Yes, it is the long version because at the time, we could not exceed 2h17 because of the size of the sets in the theaters. Otherwise, if we exceeded 2h17, we had the right to an intermission. So this is the director's cut that was released on video. The film is not a new cut or a redone version, a redux as they say, it is not that. It's simply the film transposed on a 4K support, from the original negative, and in Dolby Atmos, but made by the same mixers. It's the original team, the original team's editor and mixer who worked on the film from the elements we had.

We didn't try to create new elements. There are no new sounds in the soundtrack. In fact, before we started the restoration, I projected a standard copy of the film, which was more or less correct, and I gathered all the people who were going to work on the film. I said, "Here we go. We're not moving from this." This is the movie that people loved even though I, today, would do it differently. We don't touch it.

I hate the revised versions of some movies, starting with, obviously, the famous first Star Wars, whose Special Edition is blasphemy to the people who originally loved that movie. You don't touch that movie (Pact of the Wolves). It is what people loved. With its faults, its qualities. We're going to keep it. We will simply transpose it on a support which will allow us to restore the basic elements as well as possible, starting with the negative. The negative in all its details because I was afraid, in fact, to tackle a restoration. And then, when I saw a first simple, basic calibration, from the original negative, I realized that it was going to be a piece of cake. I mean, Dan Laustsen's negative was so beautiful, so well balanced, without any grain, really clean. I said to myself: actually, this is going to be great. And so, we redid the post-production of the film. We reassembled the original negative. So we didn't start from an intermediate element, as was the case for the digital color grading. We started from the basic element. That's why it was expensive.

C.V: Did we have to "erase" film defects (cracks, hair, etc.) for this restoration?

No, the only things we had to do was to finally balance the special effects - that is, the special effects of the beast. At the time, for example, digital color grading only allowed us to make masks and counter-masks that allowed us, more or less, to calibrate the beast against the background that had been shot on location.

In particular in the scene of the house where everything collapses, lit by torches. This scene, for me, had never been satisfactory because sometimes the beast turned magenta, sometimes the beast turned green. And there, thanks to the new technical process that allows us to instantly spot the beast in the set, we were able to calibrate it finely. This explains why many people came to me and said: "the effects are much better". But we didn't redo them. In fact, they are done correctly. What I couldn't do at the time. Simply, we were able to do the color grading correctly because today, thanks to the computer tracking, it allowed us to obtain a real fineness for the color grading of the beast, and I think that it shows.

C.V: When we saw the film again in restoration, we had the impression that the beast was better integrated, but then, it's just with the color grading that you managed to do that ?

C.G: Absolutely, I didn't change anything.

C.V: We thought there was just a little digital cropping that was done...

C.G: I would have refused. In fact, there are some shots where it could have been better, but I didn't want to change them. As I say, the history of cinema is like that. It moves forward. There are sometimes some effects that are a bit homemade, like in the 1933 King Kong. That doesn't stop it from being one of the greatest films in the world. So there you have it, my beast, it is as it is. It's just that I've been able to calibrate it a little better and I think it shows.

There too, I want to say it because often, there is a kind of thing: everyone is afraid of revisionism. And I understand why. I am anti-revisionist. And people have said to me: "the beast, you have redone the special effects". No, I didn't redo the special effects at all. I simply calibrated them better, as I could have calibrated them at the time if the film had been made 2 years later. I just did it and I was not comfortable with digital grading at the time.